No, he didn't beat the crap out of Dan Rather... when they say "assaulted", they just mean got all up in his grill in a crazy fashion. Rather was not harmed physically.
I think that they are competent, in the sense that they got exactly what they were hoping for. On the pretext of protecting "our" oil, they ran up a massive tab for the US taxpayer. Haliburton and the military industrial complex in general were the ones who profited.
Also, as another poster said, all oil companies benefited from the huge spike in oil prices caused by turbulence in the Middle East.
I truly believe that Cheney and Co never expected us to "win" in Iraq... they just wanted the war. The Bush family has been doing this for 4 generations. Yes, you probably have heard of Dubya's granddaddy, Prescott Bush, but did you know about his great-granddaddy, Samuel P Bush? He was on of the original "merchants of death" who helped to start World War I.
So the fact that a Bush led us into war is far from a surprise. The only thing that has changed is that the bad guys are now called terrorists instead of communists.
>> That doesn't make money for anyone, although it does give us plenty of free music.
I think that you and the writer of TFA have missed the point entirely. You're still stuck in the old business model - the one that's dead.
When you give away free digital copies of the music, you vastly increase the odds that the music will propagate - spread out, like a virus, and "infect" millions of hard drives. It's certainly true that this in and of itself doesn't compensate the people who created the music in any way.
But a funny thing happens if your files propagate enough: fame. And fame most certainly can be turned into cash.
Artists can sell T-shirts and other merchandise. A new artist working for a major label might earn just a few pennies (if anything) for the sale of one copy of their CD. From the sale of a T shirt, they can make a few dollars. They can make money performing their music live. And they can license their music to be used for commercial purposes.
When Radiohead made their newest album available for free online, they still made lots of money. Naysayers pointed out that not every group is a Radiohead. Most small-timers would never make that much money from the release of their music. But those unfamous bands would not have made money with a major label, either.
In the old days, I used to have to listen to radio and MTV to discover new artists. Thank goodness those days are over. I used to get so upset when I bought a CD for 15 bucks, took it home, and then discovered that the one song I had heard was also the only one I liked. The consumer doesn't have to get shafted like that anymore, and I'm glad.
Thanks, some interesting tidbits in there. Since you seem to be well informed on this subject, do you agree that these corkscrew glasses are pretty much nonsense? Mylar bags of beverages seem like the way to go to me.
No this will never work! Right now, beverage technology only enables us to store two types of beverages in mylar bags: sugary "fruit" drinks that actually contain less that 10 percent real juice, and cheap wine. Can you imaging having to always choose between those two alternatives for a year on the space station?
Actually, I'd live. Not that big of a deal. Problem solved.
But in all seriousness, this "problem" is a total joke. They eat their futuristic food goo out of a tube, so astronauts can drink out of a tube (or pouch) just as easily.
Or the other way to go is to just shoot the beverages at the astronauts in a pressurized stream, firehose-style. I'll have a SuperSoaker full of Sam Adams go, please!
Why you would take the time write this long post defending DRM is totally beyond me. It fails to stop piracy, and it inconveniences paying customers. The steps that you outline to overcome the issue are laughably difficult to 80% of computer users.
I'd give you a mod point for that if I had one, because the economic climate does have something to do with it. It's not so much the merits of the OS that matters in this context. It's how many people are buying new PCs.
The American worker hasn't gotten a raise in 6 years. For some, a lot longer. So while it's true that unemployment is low, that doesn't mean much to the PC market if no one has much disposable income.
It's similar to the situation with the PS3, and the other HD "next gen" components. Is the price too high, or is the worker too poor? It's sorta the same thing. The end result is that products don't move as quickly as corporations had hoped.
Of course, I'm not defending Vista. It sucks for all of the reasons mentioned in other comments. Plus, most of the regular users that I talk to about it hate how the interface was needlessly changed... they finally learned how to perform basic tasks on their PCs, and then MS goes and moves everything around. That's the type of thing that drives the ordinary office worker bananas.
I actually think it's a lot easier to go from XP to Ubuntu than from XP to Vista, from the point of view of a typical person.
So yeah, there are tons of factors that contribute to Vista's slow adoption, but if the economy was cooking along in a way that benefited the average person, they'd be down at Best Buy picking up a new PC.
I'd settle for a robot ump who could keep a consistent strike zone!
But yeah, it's no less valid for robo-athletes to compete than for those made of meat. Instead of a contest that tests things like genetic aptitude, efficacy of training and supplements, now two teams would be pitting their engineering and manufacturing know-how against each other. And yeah I think you're correct that strategy plays a bigger role in that type of contest than it does now.
But what's really going to blow minds is when human and robo merge, into a seamless whole. Then what sort of advantages do you attempt to test for? Or does it even matter any more at that point? The best cyborg is the best cyborg... period?
>> once DNA modifications come into play. What then?
Yeah, that's going to make the current enhancements look silly by comparison. No one will need to inject anything - their bodies will crank it out all by themselves. Perhaps there's a test, perhaps there isn't. In the end, I don't see why the next generation of athletes will get away with it any less than the current one.
Barry Bond's home run record won't stand any longer than Mark Macquire's did, because an even scarier freak is two steps behind him.
Maybe none of this matters, because in 10 years Honda will make a baseball playing robot that beats any human in all categories.
You've just described my ideal work day. What I really need now is to find someone to pay me to critique all of the many and varied movies in the post-apocalypse genre. Heck, the whole dystopian future genre is worthy of review!
My first big project: answering the eternal question regarding how much mail a dead postman can deliver. (Hint: more than you think!)
Evaluating employees can be a really hard job. I think that there's a certain Heisenberg principal to worker evaluation - by watching the worker work, you change the amount or quality of work that is done. That change might be minuscule, or it might be significant, and there's often no way to know which.
So just like you said, people end up being judged for all the wrong reasons - who shows up early and stays late (the fact that he spends half the day on ebay isn't noticed), who always seems chipper (because he is a sociopath who is good at faking), or who just plain kisses the boss's butt (despicable for obvious reasons).
So, while the world chokes on the emissions from automobiles and gas prices continue to skyrocket, no one telecommutes. Way to go, mankind.
And let's not forget the social implications of working from home. Would crime rates go down if more parents were around to, you know, raise their kids? Would fewer kids be molested or harmed in other ways? Would literacy rates go up?
But hey, we all know what matters in our society - corporate profits. And even those could benefit from telecommuting. Lots of workers would value being at home so much (for the reasons above), that the worker could be paid less - for the same amount of work!
I really do think that telecommuting will be huge eventually, as the people who grew up using the Interpipes come into power. It will seem less strange to them. Plus, by then, a barrel of light sweet crude will go for the same price as an economy car.
The Chinese workers who make all of these cheap good don't enjoy a 40 hour work week.
Furthermore, go find an old person and ask them to explain to you what life was like in the 50s. I think you'll be surprised to learn that most Americans had indoor plumbing, and enjoyed a 40 hour work week, or something in the neighborhood. They certainly had shorter weeks than the people who make our goods today
So, your facts are all screwed up. Please keep in mind that I'm not against free markets. What I am saying is that true competition cannot occur if all of the players are not playing by the same rules. Unfair competition results in a trade deficit, like the one which is killing the value of the US dollar.
The enslavement of the Chinese worker is bad for them and bad for us.
Yes, just like the free market has done such a great job of caring for the environment! And getting safe toys to our children! And improving the standard of living of the average citizen! And... the list goes on.
You can't have a free market without free people. All of the competitors in the market must play by the same rules - that's Economics 1, day 1.
With US and EU workers trying to compete with slave labor, we are doomed to fail. The massive trade deficit, among other factors, has begun to erode our way of life.
We aren't going to have the money to pay for massive internet infrastructure improvements, thanks to all these "free" markets.
I'm no commie - I just think that we should only trade with trade partners who play by the same rules that we do. Don't trash the environment and destroy species. Allow dissent and trade unions. Don't allow child labor or 80 hour work weeks. If you can't play by those rules, you shouldn't be invited to the game.
You left off one Vista "con" that is the really huge issue for people I know - rearranged interface. Everything has been moved around on Vista, to a far greater degree than was the case in the upgrade from 2k or 98 to XP.
If you stick with XP, users are in a familiar environment. If you go Vista, expect tons of calls from users who can't figure out how to accomplish basic tasks.
Heck, most Linux distros are more familiar to a typical user than Vista, because they usually look just like XP.
Whoa... the irony of your post nearly overwhelmed me there. Let me see if I can fight through it...
Your post ranting against poor quality user created content is itself user created content - and rather poor content at that!
So what you really need to ask yourself, then, is how many narrow minded Slashdot comments does the world need? Clearly, you felt that that the answer to that question was at least one more!
Obviously, 90 % of Youtube content is crap. That's also true for professionally made content. For every "Deadwood", we get nine "Big Shots". That's just how the universe works. Google 'Sturgeon's Law', and get back to me.
Would you rather live in a society where creating your own content was crimethink? Where only "official" content was acceptable and worthwhile?
Youtube does have ways to help users sort through the crap - several, in fact. So I'm not sure who is holding that gun to your head and forcing you to watch all those bad videos.
It's funny how most people will agree that 90% of anything is crap. What no one can ever agree on, however, is which 90 percent.
I say, via la difference. You stick to your Mentos and Coke clips (or whatever floats your boat), and I'll keep watching Brazilian beach booty clips. More power to ya! Or in the case of this particular article, more pixels to ya.
He has an SI derived unit named after him, so I don't think it's fair to say that his contributions went unrecognized.
In addition to the unit, he's also got a rock band and a car company named after him. There's also an airport in Serbia, and a fault line in California.
How many bands are named after Ohm, Watt, or Ampere?
It's true that Tesla's rival Edison is much better known today that Tesla, but Edison and his organization produced far more inventions than Tesla did. As great as Tesla was, did he produce anything as influential as the phonograph?
As an individual, you could argue that Tesla was more of a genius than Edison, but an argument like that is almost entirely subjective.
I do agree that more people should know who Tesla was, but relative to others in his field, he does fine. I wish we lived in a world where people cared more about physicists and inventors than they did about brainless heiresses, but sadly, that's not the case.
This comment doesn't even make sense to me... hurting for material? Are you complaining that they don't make games based on newer movies? Because guess what - they do. Every single movie that has come out in the last 10 years has a game based on it. Each and every damn one. (Personally, I thought that Hairspray: The Game was sorta fun, but got pretty boring and repetitive towards the end.)
Or are you saying that games based on movies suck in general? If that's the case, then why does the age of the movie matter?
Fact is, we know next to nothing about this game yet, which makes it a tad early to poo poo on it. Unless you just have a love for slinging poo, you cheeky monkey! Seriously though, I don't mind if you want to complain, but I think you should have a more coherent complaint. Hint: try to complain about things that actually exist. This game doesn't yet!
Exactly. Coal burning releases a veritable who's-who of heavy metals and other nasties into the air. If you generate power by nuclear means, very bad stuff is certainly possible, but the ecological damage caused by burning coal is a certainty.
Again, I don't have half the education that I'd need to really make a good call on this issue, but from where I sit, nuclear energy may well be better than most of the alternatives. That said, I sure do hope we can figure out some greener ways to generate power, and in a hurry.
But where do you store the spent rods? I think that moving them is far too risky, and could lead to scary Jack Bauer type scenarios. Reactors should probably be built in such a way that they have enough storage on site to hold all the spent rods the plant will ever generate. Anyone have any thoughts for me on why that is or is not feasible?
Interesting thoughts, but what I'm not quite getting is how you feel about Nuclear power - for or against? I mean, obviously you don't feel that they can be made perfectly safe - but then what is? Burning coal for our electricity doesn't seem to be working out real well for us. The Three Gorges damn in China caused the Yang-tse river dolphins to go extinct. As someone put it (and I wish I could remember who, to give him proper credit), every time you flip on the lights, something dies.
If the alternative to nuclear is to burn more and more coal, then maybe nukes are worth the risk? I'm not even really educated enough on the subject to have a proper opinion, but it seems like an occasional nuclear disaster might be worth it if we could avoid global warming.
Isn't the real enemy here the Earth's skyrocketing population numbers? As long as the population continues to increase, we'll need more and more energy, and the consequences of generating it likely be more and more horrible. The real message here is: spay and neuter your kids, folks! They'll be happy you did!:)
I've promised myself for years that now if I pay 10 of my hard-earned dollars to go to a movie and some bozo starts yammering away on his phone during the feature itself, I will grab the phone away from him and throw it to the other side of the theater. Yeah, that's a crime of some sort, I'm sure... but would a jury in the world convict you? And if they did, what would the punishment be? A new phone for the dirtbag? Taking me to court to actually get the money would cost more than the phone is worth.
I know it's not as fun as making a neat gizmo to do the job, and obviously it increases your chances of getting knifed by a teenage gangbanger exponentially, but as another comment said, jamming runs the risk of jamming a 911 call.
By listening to the douche say "nuthin, I'm just kickin it at the movies...", you ensure that the call is of a non-vital nature, and therefore rude as hell.
Warren Buffet is Satan himself! No, no, I kid. No human being is entirely good or evil. Even Hitler was sweet to his dogs. And as mega rich guys go, Buffet is one of the better ones, by far. I admire much about him, but let's not quite give him sainthood yet.
While I certainly applaud many of the public stances he has taken, I think it's accurate to say that Buffet has been primarily motivated by desire for profit, and not by improving the life of his fellow human bings.
And in the quest for that profit, Buffet has been a part of some business ventures that aren't exactly wonderful.
Buffet made lots of his money in insurance. My experience with insurance companies, and the overwhelming majority of anecdotal evidence that I've encountered, is that they are complete and utter bastards. The goal is always to deny the claim, not matter what. The insured then typically has to endure a bureaucratic nightmare trying to get the money that they rightfully are owed. So is that not evil?
Buffet also made a lot of money by owning Coca-Cola stock. I consider them to be pretty evil. They use a massive marketing budget to promote a product that is unhealthy and contributes massively to making the world overweight. So what's evil, if not profiting from the suffering of your fellow humans? Yeah, they're not exactly a tobacco company, but they're not really far off in my mind. To me, the Coca-Cola corporation exemplifies everything that is bad about American culture - fantastic marketing, no nutritional value.
And, to somewhat tie this rant back to the Colbert story, it's not like Buffet is a self-made man. He has far more in common with George W. Bush than he does with Colbert. Buffet is a child of privilege, like so many other rich people. His dad was in Congress. That's a nice head start in life. My dad is a meth dealer. So yeah, the playing field was not quite level there. Buffet had enough money to buy a gas station when he was 21. Did you? Me either. The Buffet worshipers should keep that in mind.
But to get back to the original poster's question: yes, rich people are all evil. As you get more and more rich, it's harder and harder to stay away from evil. I'll just quote my main man JC here: "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God".
What is so wonderful to me about Colbert's candidacy is how he is lampooning the system by becoming part of it. Yes, he faces some serious legal issues. And that's wonderful. He's gone into Andy Kaufman territory, where a big part of the joke is the fact that no one can be exactly certain where the joke ends. Colbert likes to say that he's in now way qualified, but is he really any less qualified than Fred Thompson? Or for that matter, Dubya? I'd bet a kidney that Colbert would beat Dubya on a teast covering basic knowledge of current events. Colbert a really sharp guy. Bush is not. So who is qualified?
One thing I could respect about Clinton was that whatever you could say about him, good or bad, he wasn't born with silver spoon in hand... he wasn't no Senator's son, no, no...
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No, he didn't beat the crap out of Dan Rather... when they say "assaulted", they just mean got all up in his grill in a crazy fashion. Rather was not harmed physically.
I think that they are competent, in the sense that they got exactly what they were hoping for. On the pretext of protecting "our" oil, they ran up a massive tab for the US taxpayer. Haliburton and the military industrial complex in general were the ones who profited.
Also, as another poster said, all oil companies benefited from the huge spike in oil prices caused by turbulence in the Middle East.
I truly believe that Cheney and Co never expected us to "win" in Iraq... they just wanted the war. The Bush family has been doing this for 4 generations. Yes, you probably have heard of Dubya's granddaddy, Prescott Bush, but did you know about his great-granddaddy, Samuel P Bush? He was on of the original "merchants of death" who helped to start World War I.
So the fact that a Bush led us into war is far from a surprise. The only thing that has changed is that the bad guys are now called terrorists instead of communists.
>> That doesn't make money for anyone, although it does give us plenty of free music.
I think that you and the writer of TFA have missed the point entirely. You're still stuck in the old business model - the one that's dead.
When you give away free digital copies of the music, you vastly increase the odds that the music will propagate - spread out, like a virus, and "infect" millions of hard drives. It's certainly true that this in and of itself doesn't compensate the people who created the music in any way.
But a funny thing happens if your files propagate enough: fame. And fame most certainly can be turned into cash.
Artists can sell T-shirts and other merchandise. A new artist working for a major label might earn just a few pennies (if anything) for the sale of one copy of their CD. From the sale of a T shirt, they can make a few dollars. They can make money performing their music live. And they can license their music to be used for commercial purposes.
When Radiohead made their newest album available for free online, they still made lots of money. Naysayers pointed out that not every group is a Radiohead. Most small-timers would never make that much money from the release of their music. But those unfamous bands would not have made money with a major label, either.
In the old days, I used to have to listen to radio and MTV to discover new artists. Thank goodness those days are over. I used to get so upset when I bought a CD for 15 bucks, took it home, and then discovered that the one song I had heard was also the only one I liked. The consumer doesn't have to get shafted like that anymore, and I'm glad.
Thanks, some interesting tidbits in there. Since you seem to be well informed on this subject, do you agree that these corkscrew glasses are pretty much nonsense? Mylar bags of beverages seem like the way to go to me.
No this will never work! Right now, beverage technology only enables us to store two types of beverages in mylar bags: sugary "fruit" drinks that actually contain less that 10 percent real juice, and cheap wine. Can you imaging having to always choose between those two alternatives for a year on the space station?
Actually, I'd live. Not that big of a deal. Problem solved.
But in all seriousness, this "problem" is a total joke. They eat their futuristic food goo out of a tube, so astronauts can drink out of a tube (or pouch) just as easily.
Or the other way to go is to just shoot the beverages at the astronauts in a pressurized stream, firehose-style. I'll have a SuperSoaker full of Sam Adams go, please!
Why you would take the time write this long post defending DRM is totally beyond me. It fails to stop piracy, and it inconveniences paying customers. The steps that you outline to overcome the issue are laughably difficult to 80% of computer users.
So, why do you love DRM so much?
I'd give you a mod point for that if I had one, because the economic climate does have something to do with it. It's not so much the merits of the OS that matters in this context. It's how many people are buying new PCs.
The American worker hasn't gotten a raise in 6 years. For some, a lot longer. So while it's true that unemployment is low, that doesn't mean much to the PC market if no one has much disposable income.
It's similar to the situation with the PS3, and the other HD "next gen" components. Is the price too high, or is the worker too poor? It's sorta the same thing. The end result is that products don't move as quickly as corporations had hoped.
Of course, I'm not defending Vista. It sucks for all of the reasons mentioned in other comments. Plus, most of the regular users that I talk to about it hate how the interface was needlessly changed... they finally learned how to perform basic tasks on their PCs, and then MS goes and moves everything around. That's the type of thing that drives the ordinary office worker bananas.
I actually think it's a lot easier to go from XP to Ubuntu than from XP to Vista, from the point of view of a typical person.
So yeah, there are tons of factors that contribute to Vista's slow adoption, but if the economy was cooking along in a way that benefited the average person, they'd be down at Best Buy picking up a new PC.
I'd settle for a robot ump who could keep a consistent strike zone!
But yeah, it's no less valid for robo-athletes to compete than for those made of meat. Instead of a contest that tests things like genetic aptitude, efficacy of training and supplements, now two teams would be pitting their engineering and manufacturing know-how against each other. And yeah I think you're correct that strategy plays a bigger role in that type of contest than it does now.
But what's really going to blow minds is when human and robo merge, into a seamless whole. Then what sort of advantages do you attempt to test for? Or does it even matter any more at that point? The best cyborg is the best cyborg... period?
Robots battling each other won't be worth watching? The American public and I beg to differ.
Watching two giant robots fight to the finish is going to make the Super Bowl look like golf.
At least with the robot athletes, their won't be any question of "juicing"...
>> once DNA modifications come into play. What then?
Yeah, that's going to make the current enhancements look silly by comparison. No one will need to inject anything - their bodies will crank it out all by themselves. Perhaps there's a test, perhaps there isn't. In the end, I don't see why the next generation of athletes will get away with it any less than the current one.
Barry Bond's home run record won't stand any longer than Mark Macquire's did, because an even scarier freak is two steps behind him.
Maybe none of this matters, because in 10 years Honda will make a baseball playing robot that beats any human in all categories.
Interesting idea. I wonder if it's economically feasible? How often do you take samples? How much blood do you need?
Also, is it even wrong to use a substance if it's new, and therefore not yet illegal? It certainly violates to spirit of the rules, if not the letter.
I guess I'm just a cynic, but I think that doping is here to stay, and there isn't much we can do about it.
Drug testing is the DRM of meatspace - there's always a way around it.
Yeah, this is the dumbest idea ever, and this article was not worthy of posting... anywhere!
Oh wait. Better RTFA before I say that... hold on...
From TFA: "That way everybody involved knows where we are at all times and can find us for tests"
Oh. That's how they get out of test? By going AWOL?
This still doesn't prevent use of unfair substances... they just keep inventing new drugs. You can't test for something that didn't exist yesterday.
You've just described my ideal work day. What I really need now is to find someone to pay me to critique all of the many and varied movies in the post-apocalypse genre. Heck, the whole dystopian future genre is worthy of review!
My first big project: answering the eternal question regarding how much mail a dead postman can deliver. (Hint: more than you think!)
Evaluating employees can be a really hard job. I think that there's a certain Heisenberg principal to worker evaluation - by watching the worker work, you change the amount or quality of work that is done. That change might be minuscule, or it might be significant, and there's often no way to know which.
So just like you said, people end up being judged for all the wrong reasons - who shows up early and stays late (the fact that he spends half the day on ebay isn't noticed), who always seems chipper (because he is a sociopath who is good at faking), or who just plain kisses the boss's butt (despicable for obvious reasons).
So, while the world chokes on the emissions from automobiles and gas prices continue to skyrocket, no one telecommutes. Way to go, mankind.
And let's not forget the social implications of working from home. Would crime rates go down if more parents were around to, you know, raise their kids? Would fewer kids be molested or harmed in other ways? Would literacy rates go up?
But hey, we all know what matters in our society - corporate profits. And even those could benefit from telecommuting. Lots of workers would value being at home so much (for the reasons above), that the worker could be paid less - for the same amount of work!
I really do think that telecommuting will be huge eventually, as the people who grew up using the Interpipes come into power. It will seem less strange to them. Plus, by then, a barrel of light sweet crude will go for the same price as an economy car.
Telecommuting will be big in Waterworld!
The Chinese workers who make all of these cheap good don't enjoy a 40 hour work week.
Furthermore, go find an old person and ask them to explain to you what life was like in the 50s. I think you'll be surprised to learn that most Americans had indoor plumbing, and enjoyed a 40 hour work week, or something in the neighborhood. They certainly had shorter weeks than the people who make our goods today
So, your facts are all screwed up. Please keep in mind that I'm not against free markets. What I am saying is that true competition cannot occur if all of the players are not playing by the same rules. Unfair competition results in a trade deficit, like the one which is killing the value of the US dollar.
The enslavement of the Chinese worker is bad for them and bad for us.
Um, wow. Thanks for, um, taking the time to drop those 7 letters on me. You, um, really changed my whole world view.
Yes, just like the free market has done such a great job of caring for the environment! And getting safe toys to our children! And improving the standard of living of the average citizen! And... the list goes on.
You can't have a free market without free people. All of the competitors in the market must play by the same rules - that's Economics 1, day 1.
With US and EU workers trying to compete with slave labor, we are doomed to fail. The massive trade deficit, among other factors, has begun to erode our way of life.
We aren't going to have the money to pay for massive internet infrastructure improvements, thanks to all these "free" markets.
I'm no commie - I just think that we should only trade with trade partners who play by the same rules that we do. Don't trash the environment and destroy species. Allow dissent and trade unions. Don't allow child labor or 80 hour work weeks. If you can't play by those rules, you shouldn't be invited to the game.
You left off one Vista "con" that is the really huge issue for people I know - rearranged interface. Everything has been moved around on Vista, to a far greater degree than was the case in the upgrade from 2k or 98 to XP.
If you stick with XP, users are in a familiar environment. If you go Vista, expect tons of calls from users who can't figure out how to accomplish basic tasks.
Heck, most Linux distros are more familiar to a typical user than Vista, because they usually look just like XP.
Whoa... the irony of your post nearly overwhelmed me there. Let me see if I can fight through it...
Your post ranting against poor quality user created content is itself user created content - and rather poor content at that!
So what you really need to ask yourself, then, is how many narrow minded Slashdot comments does the world need? Clearly, you felt that that the answer to that question was at least one more!
Obviously, 90 % of Youtube content is crap. That's also true for professionally made content. For every "Deadwood", we get nine "Big Shots". That's just how the universe works. Google 'Sturgeon's Law', and get back to me.
Would you rather live in a society where creating your own content was crimethink? Where only "official" content was acceptable and worthwhile?
Youtube does have ways to help users sort through the crap - several, in fact. So I'm not sure who is holding that gun to your head and forcing you to watch all those bad videos.
It's funny how most people will agree that 90% of anything is crap. What no one can ever agree on, however, is which 90 percent.
I say, via la difference. You stick to your Mentos and Coke clips (or whatever floats your boat), and I'll keep watching Brazilian beach booty clips. More power to ya! Or in the case of this particular article, more pixels to ya.
He has an SI derived unit named after him, so I don't think it's fair to say that his contributions went unrecognized.
In addition to the unit, he's also got a rock band and a car company named after him. There's also an airport in Serbia, and a fault line in California.
How many bands are named after Ohm, Watt, or Ampere?
It's true that Tesla's rival Edison is much better known today that Tesla, but Edison and his organization produced far more inventions than Tesla did. As great as Tesla was, did he produce anything as influential as the phonograph?
As an individual, you could argue that Tesla was more of a genius than Edison, but an argument like that is almost entirely subjective.
I do agree that more people should know who Tesla was, but relative to others in his field, he does fine. I wish we lived in a world where people cared more about physicists and inventors than they did about brainless heiresses, but sadly, that's not the case.
This comment doesn't even make sense to me... hurting for material? Are you complaining that they don't make games based on newer movies? Because guess what - they do. Every single movie that has come out in the last 10 years has a game based on it. Each and every damn one. (Personally, I thought that Hairspray: The Game was sorta fun, but got pretty boring and repetitive towards the end.)
Or are you saying that games based on movies suck in general? If that's the case, then why does the age of the movie matter?
Fact is, we know next to nothing about this game yet, which makes it a tad early to poo poo on it. Unless you just have a love for slinging poo, you cheeky monkey! Seriously though, I don't mind if you want to complain, but I think you should have a more coherent complaint. Hint: try to complain about things that actually exist. This game doesn't yet!
Exactly. Coal burning releases a veritable who's-who of heavy metals and other nasties into the air. If you generate power by nuclear means, very bad stuff is certainly possible, but the ecological damage caused by burning coal is a certainty.
Again, I don't have half the education that I'd need to really make a good call on this issue, but from where I sit, nuclear energy may well be better than most of the alternatives. That said, I sure do hope we can figure out some greener ways to generate power, and in a hurry.
But where do you store the spent rods? I think that moving them is far too risky, and could lead to scary Jack Bauer type scenarios. Reactors should probably be built in such a way that they have enough storage on site to hold all the spent rods the plant will ever generate. Anyone have any thoughts for me on why that is or is not feasible?
Interesting thoughts, but what I'm not quite getting is how you feel about Nuclear power - for or against? I mean, obviously you don't feel that they can be made perfectly safe - but then what is? Burning coal for our electricity doesn't seem to be working out real well for us. The Three Gorges damn in China caused the Yang-tse river dolphins to go extinct. As someone put it (and I wish I could remember who, to give him proper credit), every time you flip on the lights, something dies.
:)
If the alternative to nuclear is to burn more and more coal, then maybe nukes are worth the risk? I'm not even really educated enough on the subject to have a proper opinion, but it seems like an occasional nuclear disaster might be worth it if we could avoid global warming.
Isn't the real enemy here the Earth's skyrocketing population numbers? As long as the population continues to increase, we'll need more and more energy, and the consequences of generating it likely be more and more horrible. The real message here is: spay and neuter your kids, folks! They'll be happy you did!
I've promised myself for years that now if I pay 10 of my hard-earned dollars to go to a movie and some bozo starts yammering away on his phone during the feature itself, I will grab the phone away from him and throw it to the other side of the theater. Yeah, that's a crime of some sort, I'm sure... but would a jury in the world convict you? And if they did, what would the punishment be? A new phone for the dirtbag? Taking me to court to actually get the money would cost more than the phone is worth.
I know it's not as fun as making a neat gizmo to do the job, and obviously it increases your chances of getting knifed by a teenage gangbanger exponentially, but as another comment said, jamming runs the risk of jamming a 911 call.
By listening to the douche say "nuthin, I'm just kickin it at the movies...", you ensure that the call is of a non-vital nature, and therefore rude as hell.
This aggression shall not stand, Dude!
Warren Buffet is Satan himself! No, no, I kid. No human being is entirely good or evil. Even Hitler was sweet to his dogs. And as mega rich guys go, Buffet is one of the better ones, by far. I admire much about him, but let's not quite give him sainthood yet. While I certainly applaud many of the public stances he has taken, I think it's accurate to say that Buffet has been primarily motivated by desire for profit, and not by improving the life of his fellow human bings.
And in the quest for that profit, Buffet has been a part of some business ventures that aren't exactly wonderful. Buffet made lots of his money in insurance. My experience with insurance companies, and the overwhelming majority of anecdotal evidence that I've encountered, is that they are complete and utter bastards. The goal is always to deny the claim, not matter what. The insured then typically has to endure a bureaucratic nightmare trying to get the money that they rightfully are owed. So is that not evil?
Buffet also made a lot of money by owning Coca-Cola stock. I consider them to be pretty evil. They use a massive marketing budget to promote a product that is unhealthy and contributes massively to making the world overweight. So what's evil, if not profiting from the suffering of your fellow humans? Yeah, they're not exactly a tobacco company, but they're not really far off in my mind. To me, the Coca-Cola corporation exemplifies everything that is bad about American culture - fantastic marketing, no nutritional value.
And, to somewhat tie this rant back to the Colbert story, it's not like Buffet is a self-made man. He has far more in common with George W. Bush than he does with Colbert. Buffet is a child of privilege, like so many other rich people. His dad was in Congress. That's a nice head start in life. My dad is a meth dealer. So yeah, the playing field was not quite level there. Buffet had enough money to buy a gas station when he was 21. Did you? Me either. The Buffet worshipers should keep that in mind.
But to get back to the original poster's question: yes, rich people are all evil. As you get more and more rich, it's harder and harder to stay away from evil. I'll just quote my main man JC here: "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God".
What is so wonderful to me about Colbert's candidacy is how he is lampooning the system by becoming part of it. Yes, he faces some serious legal issues. And that's wonderful. He's gone into Andy Kaufman territory, where a big part of the joke is the fact that no one can be exactly certain where the joke ends. Colbert likes to say that he's in now way qualified, but is he really any less qualified than Fred Thompson? Or for that matter, Dubya? I'd bet a kidney that Colbert would beat Dubya on a teast covering basic knowledge of current events. Colbert a really sharp guy. Bush is not. So who is qualified?
One thing I could respect about Clinton was that whatever you could say about him, good or bad, he wasn't born with silver spoon in hand... he wasn't no Senator's son, no, no...